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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The sudden death of
Michael Jackson made his bereaved fans put into their pockets and
transform the most profitable dead celebrity this year, with revenues of
$ 275 million, according to a ranking released on Monday by Forbes magazine.

Jackson posthumously earned more than the sum of 12 other celebrities
from the list. He died on June 25, 2009, and the list last year he
appeared in third place with $ 90 million billed.

Second on the list this year comes from Elvis Presley, who
died in 1977. Business and collecting fees at the mansion-museum, Graceland
(Tennessee), a Cirque du Soleil
and more than 200 licensing agreements and advertising yielded $ 60
million to his estate.

Jackson died at age 50, victim of an accidental drug overdose, while
preparing a tour to resume his career in London. He left three sons and a
debt of half a billion dollars.

But his estate has generated millions of dollars since his death,
mostly by selling records, the film-show “This Is It,” for contracts to
launch new albums and a Cirque du Soleil in Las
Vegas.

In a news
release, Buffett is quoted as saying, "For
three years Charlie Munger and I have been looking for someone of
Todd’s caliber to handle a significant portion of Berkshire’s
investment portfolio. We are delighted that Todd will be joining us."

The release says Combs
has been managing Castle Point Capital in Greenwich, Connecticut, for
the past five years.

Buffett described Combs as an "all-American type"
who is not the least bit interested in publicity, an attitude unlikely
to shield him from it. Now a resident of Darien, Conn., Combs is by
birth a Floridian who graduated in 1993 from Florida State University
with majors in finance and multinational business operations.

Buffett also tells
Loomis that Combs' investment record during the financial crisis was
"pretty good" and Loomis calls his hiring a clear indication Buffett is
satisfied with Combs' performance.

According to Loomis, Combs will continue to work out
of Connecticut and won't be moving to Omaha.

Combs' Castle Point is described as a long/short
hedge fund that takes positions in financial services companies. It
began full-scale investing in late 2007, the same year Buffett began
his search.

Loomis
says it would have "met immediate disaster" during the financial
crisis if it had only gone long on financials, but was "apparently
saved" by its short positions.

She also notes that Combs "ducked all the most famous
disasters," by not going long on AIG, Lehman,
Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Washington Mutual, Countrywide, Fannie Mae or
Freddie Mac.

That,
she writes, is consistent with Buffett's stated intention in his 2007
letterto hire someone who is "genetically
programmed to recognize and avoid risk, including those never before
encountered."

In
its most recent 13-F
filing with the SEC, Castle Point lists U.S.
Bancorp ($22.8 million), Mastercard ($20.4 million), and State Street
($19.0 million) as its three largest long positions as of June 30.
Berkshire also reports holding U.S. Bancorp stock. Its 69 million
shares, as of June 30, would have a current market value of $1.6
billion.

It is important to note
that today's announcement does not signal Combs will automatically
become the "next" Warren Buffett and eventually run all of Berkshire
Hathaway.

Buffett
has said for some time now that when he's no longer running Berkshire,
his duties will be split among a new CEO, who would oversee the
operating businesses, and one or more investment
chiefs.

Loomis
notes that the hiring of Combs "at least partially satisfies" Buffett's
2007 planto "hire a younger man or woman
with the potential to manage a very large portfolio, who we hope will
succeed me as Berkshire’s chief investment officer when the need for
someone to do that arises."

He noted at the time that "as part of the selection
process, we may in fact take on several candidates."

Longtime Buffett-watcher Whitney Tilson
says in an email tonight that given Berkshire's many "enormously
successful" investments in financials, "and the likelihood that there
will be more busts/panics in this sector over time (human nature never
changes) – it makes sense to have a specialist in this area be one of
the investment managers going forward."

Tilson speculates that with Li Lu concentrating on
Asia and China, and Combs focused on financials, Berkshire could name
another investment manager, perhaps with a background in consumer
products and retail.

BAGHDAD — Tariq Aziz, a
former top aide to Saddam Hussein, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi
court on Tuesday for crimes against members of rival Shiite political
parties.

The ruling was the latest in a
series of criminal cases against Mr. Aziz, 74, whose frequent media
appearances and travels abroad made him the bespectacled face of Mr.
Hussein’s regime. For years, Mr. Aziz served as a staunch and public
defender of Mr. Hussein before the American-led invasion of 2003.

Because Mr. Hussein rarely left
Iraq out of fears about his safety, Mr. Aziz represented Iraq in the
diplomatic world. He surrendered to American forces shortly after the
invasion, aware that, for Americans, he was among Iraq’s most hunted
officials and one of the best known emblems of the Saddam Hussein era.

Mr. Aziz’s death sentence
stemmed from charges of persecution against members of the religious
Shiite Dawa Party, which counts Iraq’s current prime minister, Nuri
Kamal-al Maliki, among its members.

It was unclear when Mr. Aziz
would be executed.

One of Mr. Aziz’s lawyers, Badea
Araf Azzit, said he was considering whether to appeal. He dismissed the
sentence as a ploy aimed at distracting attention from Iraq’s political
stalemate and the recent publication of a trove of American war records
that described widespread prisoner abuse by Iraqi guards and security
forces.

“It is a political judgment,”
Mr. Azzit said.

Mr. Aziz’s lawyers have long
claimed he was only responsible for Iraq’s diplomatic and political
relations, and had no ties to the executions and purges carried out by
Mr. Hussein’s Baathist government. Mr. Hussein was himself hanged in
2006, less than two months after his death sentence was handed down.

Mr. Aziz’s lawyer said he
remained in poor health. In January, the American military said in a
statement that he suffered a blood clot in the brain. He was taken to an
American military hospital north of Baghdad for treatment.

In March 2009, Mr. Aziz was
sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes against humanity, but he was
acquitted earlier that year on charges of ordering a 1999 crackdown
against Shiite protesters after a revered Shiite cleric was
assassinated.

He is also serving a seven-year
prison sentence for a case involving the forced displacement of Kurds in
northern Iraq.

In a recent interview with The
Associated Press, he predicted he would die in prison, citing his old
age and lengthy prison sentences.

Death sentences were also handed
down on Tuesday against other former officials in Mr. Hussein’s
government including Abed Hammoud, a former secretary to Mr. Hussein,
and former Interior Minister Sadoon Shaker.

Under Mr. Hussein, Mr. Aziz
cultivated a reputation as a cigar-smoking, whisky-drinking, worldly
diplomat who used his official posts to justify the invasion of Kuwait,
the efforts to obscure Mr. Hussein’s weapons program, the mass killings
of Kurds and Shiites in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and the use of
chemical weapons at the Kurdish town of Halabja, among other things.

Only weeks before the
American-led invasion in 2003, he had an audience with Pope John Paul II
at the Vatican, one of dozens of encounters with world leaders.

When he surrendered to American
troops in his hometown, Mosul, in northern Iraq, he apparently did so
for his own safety in the face of mobs hunting down officials of the
ousted government.

He was No. 43, and the eight of
spades, on the Pentagon’s ”pack of cards” listing the 55 most wanted
officials of Mr. Hussein’s government. American officials said that,
after his surrender, Mr. Aziz offered to testify against Mr. Hussein on
the condition that he be released early, a proposition eventually
rejected by an Iraqi court and its American advisers.

Nurse's aide Michele Kalina has been charged
with murdering five of her own newborn babies.

A Pennsylvania nurse’s aide, Michele Kalina, has been arrested for murder after
her husband and daughter found the bones of five newborn babies hidden
in her closet.

Kalina is believed to have conceived the babies through an affair
with a man who knew nothing of the pregnancies.

Resorting to murder as a means of birth control seems so unimaginably
awful you’d think this case would be unique, but it’s chillingly like a
recent one in France. There, another nurse’s aide, Dominique Cottrez, is alleged to have killed 8
newborn babies and buried them in her backyard.

These cases are so similar, and so
awful, that it’s impossible not to wonder what connects them. There have
been several cases of multiple infanticides in Europe in the past few
years: a woman in Germany murdered 8 of her newborns and buried them in
her parents yard; another French woman killed 3 of her own babies.
Not only is this kind of serial infanticide unthinkable to me, I’m in
shock just imagining being pregnant 5, 6 or 8 times. And hiding all
those pregnancies from everyone I knew and loved. And giving birth,
multiple times, alone, in secret. These women must have suffered
incredibly, in the process of committing these grotesque crimes.

One theory about serial infanticide points to “pregnancy denial”: a
woman may refuse to acknowledge she is pregnant, and then kill her baby
in a panic when she’s given birth and can no longer deny it. But to do
so five or six or eight times? Surely that is a whole other level of
madness.

Is there some unrecognized and blessedly rare mental illness that
causes women to serially murder their own newborns?

As a psychologist commenting on the Cottrez case told MSNBC:

Even if we don’t know enough to put a label on it, I
cannot imagine this occurring over and over again if this woman’s
mental faculties were not impaired to some degree. Whether she is
psychotic or an abuse survivor, or whatever, certain psychological
factors contributed to these incidents occurring over and over again.

The Kalina case mirrors the Cottrez case to a truly frightening
degree: both women were nurse’s aides, both were in their mid-40s when
they were caught, both had two children they raised (though Kalina’s son
died ten years ago).
What happened to these women? Were there warning signs their families
could have watched for years earlier?

Peter Bossman and some of his supporters celebrate
his victory in the Slovenian Adriatic town of Piran yesterday.
Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
A Ghana-born doctor nicknamed "the Obama of Piran" became the first
black mayor in eastern Europe yesterday after he was elected in Piran,
south-western Slovenia.

Peter
Bossman, 54, said he was "happy and proud" to have been elected to the
post after winning a second round runoff in the town with just over half
the votes.

Bossman settled in Slovenia, then still part of
Yugoslavia, in the 1970s after arriving in the country to study
medicine. He decided to stay after marrying a fellow student from
Croatia.

Speaking about his campaign, in which he said he would
introduce electric cars to the town, Bossman said: "I based my campaign
on a dialogue, and I think the dialogue has won."

But Bossman was
criticised during the campaign for not speaking fluent Slovene, the
country's official language, prompting him to say in an interview with
Delo, one of Slovenia's leading newspapers, that a friend and professor
of Slovenian had "offered to give me additional lessons".

However
the new mayor, who runs his own private medical practice and is a member
of Slovenia's governing centre-left Social Democrat party, said he had
not suffered racial discrimination.

"In the first months after
coming to Slovenia I felt that some people did not want to be with us
[African immigrants]. But for the last 10 or 15 years … I have no
problems at all and I think people no longer see the colour of my skin
when they look at me," he said.

Slovenia has a population of
around 2 million, the majority of whom are native Slovene, and
immigration is more common from ex-Yugoslavian countries such as Bosnia
and Herzegovina and Serbia. There are very few black people living
there. The town of Piran, which lies on the Gulf of Piran on the
Adriatic Sea, has a population of around 17,000.

Vlado Miheljak, a
political analyst, said the vote in Piran was a test of whether
Slovenia was "mature enough to elect a non-white political
representative."

By Bill
Wilson
The Bretton Woods monetary system, which was established after World
War II and solidified the U.S. dollar’s place as the world’s reserve
currency, is collapsing before our eyes. That’s too bad, because that
status may be one of the last assets the American people have left in
the global economy.

For the past 65 years, that status has guaranteed a greater demand
for dollars worldwide since it can be used in most transactions. This
has resulted in commodities priced in dollars, generated for a larger
flow of capital back to the U.S., and allowed the nation to borrow at
low interest rates.

The premise for the dollar’s special status was two-fold. The first
was military supremacy and the wide protection offered by courageous
U.S. forces abroad. For other nations this has meant having a strong
ally against potential invaders, but also protected trade routes, and
access to wide markets and first class technology. By and large, the
U.S. has kept up this part of the bargain.
Get full story here.

By Rebekah
Rast
The Juan Williams firing by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
has given budget hawks an answer to the most pressing budget question
that they have faced in this election cycle, “What are you going to
cut?”

The answer is being provided by Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO), who
has legislation before Congress that would defund the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting as a first mini-step toward slimming down America’s
$13.6 trillion debt.

In an exclusive interview with Americans for Limited Government
(ALG), Rep. Lamborn discussed the outlook of his legislation to defund
CPB and how the American people can get involved and stop their
hard-earned tax dollars from being spent on unnecessary
government-sponsored programs.
Get full story here.

By David Bozeman
Yes, that Warren Harding. November 2nd marks the birthday of the
historians’ perennial choice for the worst president ever. Tea Partiers
are embracing the folksy, budget-cutting Calvin Coolidge, who assumed
office upon Harding’s death in 1923, but only a few prominent
conservatives have dared to try reviving the legacy of our 29th
president, tainted forever with the stench of Teapot Dome and other
scandals, along with all-night poker and sexual debauchery.

His reputation as a failure is so ingrained in our collective memory
that detailing a rebuttal of his supposedly sleazy tenure is clearly
not possible in this tiny space. Suffice it to say, the scandalous
dealings of his Interior and Veteran’s Affairs secretaries reflect his
poor judgment, and his moral shortcomings are as emblematic of the
1920’s as flappers and bootleg gin. But the worst
president ever?

Proof that the Harding name can’t get a break is that his wife
Florence is generally considered the worst of all first ladies. In a
just world, this strong, trail-blazing patriot (an advocate for
veterans, she referred to them as her “boys”) would be extolled as a
role model and forerunner of such activist presidential wives as Eleanor
Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton. But the die was cast shortly after the
president’s death, and later generations accepted as gospel the
proclamations of the historians.
Get full story here.

T.I. was recently sentenced to 11 months in
prison for violating his probation, but in a legalistic irony, the drug
case that got him in trouble has been dropped.

T.I. and his wife, Tameka
“Tiny” Cottle, were arrested Sept. 1 in L.A. after police said they
smelled marijuana coming from their car during a traffic stop. According
to papers filed today, the Los Angeles County District Attorney is no
longer pursuing charges against T.I., specifically because an Atlanta
judge has already ordered him back to prison. The District Attorney’s
office declined to comment on reports suggesting that there may have
been additional issues with the evidence against T.I.
“The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office’s decision to reject
T.I.’s case was the right thing to do under the circumstances,” said
lead defense attorney Steve Sadow in a statement provided to EW.
“Both his Los Angeles defense attorney Blair Berk and myself commend
the LADAO for exercising its discretion to reject prosecution in light
of the legal and factual issues involved.”

NYC
Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that it's time to go back to the old
two-term limit. In 2008 Bloomberg backed changing the law which enabled
his current third term. The New York Times blasts:

It was the latest installment in the story of
Mr. Bloomberg’s ever-evolving relationship with term limits. An
outspoken supporter of two terms, he once called Council members who
proposed extending them “disgraceful.” Then, as his own time in office
wound down, he reversed himself and advocated for three terms, saying
they offered voters greater choice. “You can make that case for two
terms or three terms,” he said at the time. “In this case, after
listening to everybody, I’ve been convinced that three terms is right.” Now he seems to have settled on something
of a compromise: three terms for him, and only him. Mayoral
allies pointed out that Mr. Bloomberg had kept his word by bringing the
issue back to voters, who originally passed the two-term limit in a 1993
referendum, only to watch it be dismantled by the mayor and the
Council.

Bloomberg's expected successor in 2008
was openly lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who backed the
three-term change, saying Bloomberg's leadership was needed during the
Wall Street meltdown. But ten days before the November 2009 election,
Quinn endorsed City Controller Bill Thompson, who ended up losing to
Bloomberg by a mere four points. Quinn will doubtlessly run for mayor
in 2013, but faces strong opposition by a faction of the LGBT community,
some of whom show up to protest many of Quinn's public appearances.

Trenton, NJ—Daryl M.
Brooks, Co-Founder of the Greater Trenton Tea Party and long time
community
activist, called the newly released voter fraud video implicating
officials at
NJEA at being complicit in a voter fraud cover-up as being most
disturbing. We must get to the bottom of this and I
will be bringing this video along with yesterday’s released video to the
New
Jersey Attorney General Paula T. Dow so an immediate investigation can
begin
into the practices of the NJEA.
Brooks made these new demands in light of the just released voter
fraud
video posted at www.liberist.com

"NJEA’s
close
association with the Democratic Party has long been known but this is
worse than
even I imagined.” Brooks continued,
"When you think
of voter fraud, you think of people voting twice, or people using the
name
of a deceased voter. This is wholesale abuse of democracy
itself."

"We cannot
allow yesterday’s allegations to fade either. I will
continue to demand from NJEA
officials the name of the teacher involved, and call for their immediate
suspension until a full investigation into this incident and other
similar
incidents are explained. It is
absurd to think a teacher could be allowed to make such disgusting
remarks and
continue to remain in the classroom, and do so with immunity just
because they
are tenured. I will be calling for
a protest in front of NJEA headquarters next week if my demands are not
met.",
added Brooks.

James
O’Keefe responsible for the producing the newest video
concluded, “Don’t crucify the messenger, examine the message. These
are serious allegations and must
be looked into. Free and clean
elections are at the very cornerstone of our Democracy and everything
must be
done to insure nothing interferes with it.
The public must have confidence in the electoral process and this
cuts to
the very core of that confidence. I
hope the NJEA works with me in putting light on these allegations, so
the public
can be assured these practices do not continue to
exist.”

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